Mechanics' Institute Chess Club Newsletter #375

His match strategy was brilliant. Garry was tortured – but for me the Berlin is one of the most depressing things in chess. I’d give up the game if I were forced to play it.

Joel Lautier commenting on Vladimir Kramnik’s successful use of the Berlin Defense in his World Championship match with Garry Kasparov. ( King’s Gambit by Paul Hoffman, page 131)

1) Mechanics' Institute Chess Club News

2) Gata Kamsky shines in World Cup

3) New Rules for Chess Olympiads by Almog Burstein

4) Stuart Wagman 1919-2007

5) Thomas Groombridge 1953-2007

6) Here and There

7) Upcoming Events

1) Mechanics' Institute Chess Club News

IM Ricardo DeGuzman won the 7th Annual Guthrie McClain Memorial on December 8 with a 5-0 score, defeating NMs Michael Pearson and Keith Vickers en route. Tying for second at 4-1 in the 34-player event were Pearson, Romulo Fuentes and Nicholas Nip.

IM John Grefe and Expert Jules Jelinek are tied for first at 6.5 from 8 going into the final round of the Fall Tuesday Night Marathon and will play each other to decide first place.

IM Enrico Sevillano and NM John Bryant scored 4.5 from 5 to tie for first in the 3rd Annual Igor Ivanov Memorial held December 8 in St. George, Utah. MI Chess Director IM John Donaldson drew with Sevillano and Bryant to share third place at 4-1.

Last night IM David Pruess gave a well received talk at the MI on his recent tour of Europe where he earned his second GM norm. Look for special lectures like this on a monthly basis at the Mechanics'. Next up is IM Josh Friedel in January.

2) Gata Kamsky shines in World Cup

America's number one player Gata Kamsky has had an incredible run in the FIDE World Cup and now only Alexey Shirov stands between him and a match with Veselin Topalov for the right to play the winner of Anand-Kramnik.

Gata's performance, in which he has won 6 matches with only the one with Svidler going to tiebreak, has been superb .Unofficially he has picked up around 20 FIDE points which puts him in the mid 2730s and is a clear indication Gata has fully recovered the form that made him number 3 in the world in the 1990s.

The round 7 will be a four game match with tiebreakers if necessary.

Round 1 Ahmed Adly (2494) 1.5-.5

Round 2 Boris Avrukh (2641) 1.5-.5

Round 3 Kiril Georgiev (2649) 1.5-.5

Round 4 Peter Svidler (2732) 2.5-1.5

Round 5 Ruslan Ponomariov (2705) 1.5-.5

Round 6 Magnus Carlsen (2714) 1.5-.5

Round 7 Alexei Shirov ( 2739)

3) New Rules for Chess Olympiads by Almog Burstein

Dear Chess Friends,

Re: New Rules for the Chess Olympiads

FIDE Executive Board approved, in its recent meeting in Antalya, Turkey, new rules for the Chess Olympiads, which will come into effect at the 2008 Dresden Olympiad. As there are many significant changes, FIDE draws the attention of national federations to ensure that they and their players are acquainted with the new rules before they attend the Olympiad.

After 50 years (until 1974) of playing the Chess Olympiads under the round-robin system (mostly with preliminaries and finals), FIDE adopted (from 1976) the Swiss System. So, let me introduce the main important changes:

The number of boards in each match in the Women's Olympiad was increased from 3 to 4; the number of reserve players in the Open Olympiad was reduced from 2 to 1. That means that all teams in both olympiads will be composed of four players and one reserve.

The number of rounds was reduced to 11 (instead of 13-14 rounds in previous Olympiads).

In the first round, two 'imaginary' match points shall be added, for pairing purposes only, to each of the teams in the top half of the initial list. That means that in an Olympiad with 120 teams, the pairings for the first round will be 1-31, 2-32, 3-33 … 29-59, 30-60 and then 61-91, 62-92, 63-93 etc. (instead of 1-61, 2-62, 3-63 etc. in previous Olympiads).

In the second round, the winning teams in the top half will play with one another (i.e. 1-16, 2-17 etc.), the losing teams in the bottom half will play with one another (i.e. 91-106, 92-107), while the losing teams in the top half will play against the winning teams in the bottom half! (i.e. 31-61, 32-62, 33-63 etc.). This way we 'save' one round which is very important towards the end of the Olympiad. The `imaginary` points shall be deducted before making the pairings for the third round.

The final standing shall be determined by match points (instead of game points). That means that the winning team in each match (by game result of 2.5:1.5, 3:1, 3.5:0.5 or 4:0) gets 2 match points while its opponent gets no match points. In case of a draw (game result of 2:2) each team gets one match point.

The position of teams that finish with the same number of match points shall be determined by the Sonnenborn-Berger system which is the sum of the match points of all opponents, excluding the opponent who scored the lowest number of match points, while each opponent's match score is multiplied by the team's game result against this opponent. The idea behind this new rule is to combine, in the first procedure of the tie breaking, both the strength of the opponents and the number of game points scored against each one of them. The more game points scored against stronger opponents, the better for the team. This way we also give the teams a substantial incentive to win as many game points as possible in each match and not to be satisfied with the minimal win of 2.5:1.5. The exclusion of the weakest opponent is made in order to neutralize the effect of non played matches on the final results.

If Sonnenborn-Berger does not break the tie, the next tie-breaking procedures are: (b = Buchholz) by the sum of the match scores of all the team's opponents, excluding the opponent who scored the lowest number of match points; and (c) by the sum of the game points scored.

The standing after each round, according to the procedure explained in points 5-7 above, is also the basis for the pairings of each next round.

Yours sincerely,

Almog Burstein, Chairman

Technical Administration Panel

4) Stuart Wagman 1919-2007

FM Stuart Wagman died Nov. 24 in Livorno, Italy, where he had lived for the past half-century. A member of the Washington Chess Divan in the 1940s Wagman was inactive for many years but started to play again regularly after his retirement. He earned the FM title in his 60s and was a strong player even in his last years. His score of 6 from 11 in the 2006 World Senior Championship at the age of 87, was the best by an American.

I had the opportunity to meet Stuart at the Lugano Open in 1983. He was always friendly and in good spirits but his play was uncompromising. He loved sharp, romantic openings.

NM Thomas Edward Groombridge of Lathrop, California, died on November 21 of a heart attack. Tommy, as he was known to his friends, started the Lubbock Chess Club with Robert Montgomery in the 1980s. He served as president of the LCC and was the driving force to promote chess in West Texas in the 1990s, organizing and directing many tournaments. His passion for chess was such that after retiring from playing he continued to devote himself to promoting the royal game, first through a chess learning center for kids in Casa Grande, Arizona, and later by setting up one of the better chess book stores on Ebay. His dealings with his store, which listed hundreds of books and magazines in all languages, earned him a lasting reputation for friendliness and honesty.

Thanks to Mitch Suess for providing some of this information.

6) Here and There

The new Italian Champion, 15-year old GM, Fabiano Caruana (2594) will be one of the favourites in the C-tournament at Curus ( Wijk aan Zee) this January. Fabiano had a fabulous result in the Italian Championship scoring 9.5 from 11 for a 2729 performance.

GM William Lombardy turned 70 on December 4th. One of the strongest junior players America has ever produced (his 11-0 score in the 1957 World Junior is unmatched), Lombardy is perhaps best remembered for his historic win over Boris Spassky in the 1960 World Student Team Championship in Leningrad, an event the Americans won. His duties as a Roman Catholic priest never fully allowed Lombardy to realize his potential as a chess player but his performance on US Olympiad teams in the 1958 to 1978 is nonetheless quite impressive with a lifetime score of 63 points from 91 games (69.2 percent), with four team medals (1 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze) and two individual board prizes ( gold and silver). An accomplished author - his book on the 1973 US Championship comes immediately to mind, Lombardy was also a longtime columnist for Chess Life. Though he has not been active in recent years Lombardy's considerable achievements deserve to be remembered.

Hikaru Nakamura turned 20 on December 9. Best known for his playing skills Hikaru has recently branched out and penned some articles for the New in Chess series Secrets of Opening Surprises including one on his old favorite 1.e4 e5 2.Qh5.

Here is an exciting Bishop versus Knight ending from the recent American Open won by GM Alex Yermolinsky.

I will be running USCF rated chess tournaments in Cupertino ! Events for scholastic (K-12) players will be on Nov 25, Dec 22, Jan 12, and Feb 16. These will all be
trophy prize quads. Please note the earlier start time of 2pm. Please check in before 1:45pm. I will also have an Adult tournament on Nov 24. These are octos, 3-SS. I expect some masters to play in this one. The players will be distributed into sections of 8 each. This allows a first prize of $100 for each section. If you have any questions, please contact me.